The first stage finished its job and separated about 2.5 minutes later before preparing to land on a drone ship downrange in the Atlantic Ocean.

Footage shared to the ISS Twitter account shows the unmanned Crew Dragon capsule approaching the ISS orbital lab 266 miles above the Earth's surface south of Australia. It docked autonomously under the station astronauts' watchful eyes, instead of relying on the station's robot arm for berthing.

- Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) March 3, 2019The first @Commercial_Crew mission arrived at the space station today when the @SpaceX #CrewDragon completed soft capture on the Harmony module at 5:51am ET. Although there was no crew aboard this time, SpaceX's reusable capsule is created to carry up to seven astronauts to and from Earth's orbit. The capsule will remain at the ISS for another five days. If everything isn't ideal and ready to go right at 2:49 a.m. EST, the launch will be pushed back to Tuesday at the earliest.

Bridenstine has explained that NASA wants to reduce costs in low orbit to devote resources to getting back to the Moon and assembling a small space station in lunar orbit in the 2020s.

Also of interest over the course of Dragon's mission will be the performance of the Draco thrusters used to maneuver in orbit.

As a result, NASA and SpaceX modified the mission design to constrain the thermal environment and ensure the thrusters would be ready for flight.

Hours later, crew members are expected to open the capsule's hatch and hold a welcome ceremony for the craft.

The space station's three astronauts had front-row seats as the white 27-foot-long (8-meter-long) capsule neatly docked, a little early no less.

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